I have spent the last week grappling with PC-BSD and found it a huge disappointment. The promise of a simple Freebsd install and self installing binaries seemed like a dream. I have now erased it and reinstalled UBuntu Edgy.

PC-BSD installs effortlessly and has great hardware detection. The only problem is that you have a very limited base system with no real options.

The PBI store is basically empty. About a dozen essential applications (mostly out of date) and a few knicknacks - this compares with the 16,000 ports available. Sure the PBIs install with a simple click. The only problem is the PBI applications don't really work properly after installation. The system is stable but the applications crash constantly. The uninstaller frequently fails to remove installed PBIs.

Don't bother trying to use the ports system. It simply won't co-exist with the PBI system. The Kports graphical port manager quits constantly. The command line doesn't work because the ports won't install properly.

Don't bother looking for help on the forums - they are practically non-existent. I (and several other users) downloaded the Wine PBI. It came up as corrupted - the advice from the maintainer was to try a different download mirror despite the PBI itself being corrupted.

I then decided to install Ubuntu Edgy as a dual boot. Ubuntu can't resize UFS partitions. Time for PC-BSD to be erased and replaced.

PCBSD is no good for newbies due to a lack of software. Experienced users can simply install Freebsd or desktopbsd (and update to Freebsd 6.2)

The PBI store is basically empty. About a dozen essential applications (mostly out of date) and a few knicknacks - this compares withn the 16,000 ports available. Sure the PBIs install with a simple click. The only problem is the PBI applications don't really work properly after installation. The system is stable but the applications crash constantly. The uninstaller frequently fails to remove installed PBIs.

First time I hear about inability to uninstall any PBI- what package is caused you such a problem?

Don't bother trying to use the ports system. It simply won't co-exist with the PBI system. The Kports graphical port manager quits constantly. The command line doesn't work because the ports won't install properly.

Kports is not official PC-BSD ports manager and until it gain some stability- never will. Command line works perfectly here- you just had bad luck with some port- you should contact port maintainer about issues you found- look at Makefile in port directory for more information. I have reported many ports inconsistency and they are fixed within hours.

Don't bother looking for help on the forums - they are practically non-existent. I (and several other users) downloaded the Wine PBI. It came up as corrupted - the advice from the maintainer was to try a different download mirror despite the PBI itself being corrupted.

Yes, sometimes mirrors are syncronised same time as PBI is uploaded and got half-uploaded file- this is our fault that we publish PBI too early- have to wait for mirrors sync.

I'm having a hard time believing you. I feel a lot more at home with PC-BSD than with Ubuntu.

The only problem is that you have a very limited base system with no real options.

Could you elaborate?

They don't have that many application as PBI files but they offer the most used ones. There is still the ports collection with 18,000 applications. I don't use ports because I have what I need as PBI's.

The system is stable but the applications crash constantly. The uninstaller frequently fails to remove installed PBIs.

You really didn't have luck. I haven't had any application crash. If the application doesn't work, it's not PC-BSD's fault, it's due to the person who released the PBI.

AFAIK, ports, packages and PBI's works very well together. On their forum I haven't seen any complain on this issue. Ports are known for their stability. Did you read the "UPDATING" file?

PCBSD is no good for newbies due to a lack of software.

Among the 18,000 ports, I can find more than I need. I actually use exclusively PBI's.

I think the PC-BSD forum is excellent, there is always people to help. Kudos to them and good luck.

Now now, can you really say you don't believe them? I think what they say is completely true. Where they are making the major error, is casting off the whole operating system because of what happened to them, because of their experience. I'm guessing they want something that boots and works perfectly no matter how limited the user's knowledge is. If they want something like that, I would greatly recommend, maybe emphasis, to go use, umm is the "W" word allowed here on OSNews? Or is it only the "M" word we can't say? I'd recommend something else, BSD is not for you at this point if not willing to take the time to read, ask questions, try doing what people suggest before saying it sucks. Although with their impatience combined with frustration, I would say there is a possibility there that they could be exaggerating 1 or 2 things.

I'll give an example. I am currently trying to use OpenBSD, I got it installed, but that's, I got jack else working. I am trying to figure out how to dual boot it on a dual hard drive system, and trying to figure out how to get KDE installed and up and running so I can start doing stuff from there. My point is, I want to use OpenBSD, knowing I'd be clueless going into it, so I bought Absolute OpenBSD book, signed up for a couple mailing lists, have read a couple OpenBSD FAQ's. So what I'm saying is it's not currently doing what I want, so I'm trying to search through, read stuff, email people, search the net, to help me step by step to what I want to do, and make sure I am not asking for things that the system is not intended for, always remembering my lack of knowledge of OpenBSD before I say anything bad about it. So I am trying to learn the system to see what my options are, and not see if it fits up to my standard of telling it what it must do for me

Side note to first paragraph:Maybe Mac would be easier, but don't try using any non-Apple software for any serious work, that's why there's books on "the Mac Cult".

"I'm guessing they want something that boots and works perfectly no matter how limited the user's knowledge is. If they want something like that, I would greatly recommend, maybe emphasis, to go use, umm is the "W" word allowed here on OSNews? "

In all fairness, PC-BSD does claim to be a distribution for non-experts.

"Don't bother trying to use the ports system. It simply won't co-exist with the PBI system. The Kports graphical port manager quits constantly. The command line doesn't work because the ports won't install properly."

Don't reduce the ports system with the KPorts program. From my experience, using ports (cd /usr/ports/what/ever && make install) works fine.

Cannot confirm this. My neighbour now uses PC-BSD sinve version 1.1 and is very happy with the base system, the KDE desktop and the software availabe via the PBI directory. He never complained about not finding a program fitting his needs. Along with the provided PBI packages the FreeBSD ports can be used as well, there are 20,000+ applications (if I remember the number correctly) available. Next to the ports, every POSIX compatible program can be compiled and installed with PC-BSD; the classical "./configure && make && make install" sould still work.

How many (and what) applications do you suppose a newbie to need?

In my opinion, it's not the amount of available software, it's the easieness to install software what's important do a newbie. Newbies in most cases don't know what they want and therefore cannot find software they really need.

PC-BSD has been a pretty impressive project. There have been several who have attempted a desktop flavor of FreeBSD and all have pretty much faded into obscurity without accomplishing their goal. I'm impressed by PC-BSD, and especially impressed by the PBI packages.

Since PCBSD obviously will be very appealing for quite a few homeusers, I find it odd that getting it to share files with XP is such a hazzle. How about having a simple option to simply put on file sharing, similar to how Windows does this very simply?

As an extension to that, making it a file server easily would also give you the love of about 90% of the worlds companies, as those are fewer than 10 people and really don't want any IT people employed.

Since PCBSD obviously will be very appealing for quite a few homeusers, I find it odd that getting it to share files with XP is such a hazzle. How about having a simple option to simply put on file sharing, similar to how Windows does this very simply?

Unfortunately KDE Samba configuration plugin is so buggy that KDE-FreeBSD porters decided to throw it out from port. NFS configuration that is managed by same plugin is so Linux specific that it is unusable in FreeBSD. Linux guys toke NFS, embraced and "enhanced" it to that level that it ain't work with any other system than Linux itself (I am not 100% sure about this matter but so I heard).

No. However, I like wizards when they work right. I am one of those lazy people that like a nice GUI setup screen that makes it easier to set things up. However, I also like to know that I can get down and dirty when I have to.

My thinking is if you can make it easier on yourself then why not, but that doesn't mean you have to make it simple with no way to fix what simple can't do.

Any problems I've had w/ PC-BSD comes from being spoiled on Linux eyecandy, but after tweaking fonts to make Emacs legible and reading Ch.5 of the FreeBSD manual on X Windows to make fonts shine, I feel as close as I can to Linux' roots in unix.

Yes, there's a slight learning curve and no, not everything works as in Linux (flash, e.g.) but I love ports, love the simplicity -- Arch Linux and Frugalware share the same philosophy.

Kudos to the developers on an outstanding job of making FreeBSD accessible to everyone.

FreeBSD has a long way to go with their hardware support in order for them to even think about replacing Linux in various capacities.

For instance, their savage driver is still broken in this release and hardware drivers are lacking. And this even after a bug report was filed 1 month after the 6.1 release came out. Quality control anyone?

You have quality with *BSD and quantity with Linux. Some small hacks aren't really any kind of stable development. It just works is Linus credo. It works because it's good handcrafted code is *BSD credo. But I do think this isn't something you like to hear. Maybe people like Alan Cox or Andrew Morton fit better? These people stand for quality in Linux and they are fightin g against the legions of "hackers", who don't know it better. Maybe Linux will mature in future, but it's a long, hard road - LSB is the beginning.

*per aspera ad astra*

>Linux is still the best the future has to offer...

I see, a second "Windows" with all it's trade offs. Thanks. But hey it's opensource
Some people like it to work with an os, others like it to tinker with an os - it's a free world, do what you want :o)

"I see, a second "Windows" with all it's trade offs. Thanks. But hey it's opensource
Some people like it to work with an os, others like it to tinker with an os - it's a free world, do what you want :o..."

For your info I use Slackware so I hardly "tinker" as you put it. FreeBSD simply does not rise to the level of Linux in hardware support. Also, if someone is going to produce an OS that does not work as well as others and relies on "tinkering" or "fixes" that may be fine for some folk but at least admit it and work on it.

This tinkering aspect of FreeBSD is holding it back. It's got nothing to do with Windows so don't even go there.

>FreeBSD simply does not rise to the level of Linux in hardware support.

X -> mostly the same support
Audio -> almost the same
TV -> a field of Linux, but they have some unstable drivers too in kernel
Network/Wlan -> no real difference, maybe better in OBSD

>if someone is going to produce an OS that does not work as well as others and relies on "tinkering" or "fixes" that may be fine for some folk but at least admit it and work on it.

There isn't something to admit, because it's FUD of Linux people. Sorry but you hear this rant everywhere.

Slackware was a nice distro, some years ago. Today it's just years behind, behind every OS. No default(!) package management, kernel 2.4.x is default (guess why, because of stability ) and so on. Your miracle of development is just an vintage os in Linux world. But well, give me more of your FUD, it's really amusing

"Slackware was a nice distro, some years ago. Today it's just years behind, behind every OS. No default(!) package management, kernel 2.4.x is default (guess why, because of stability ) and so on. Your miracle of development is just an vintage os in Linux world. But well, give me more of your FUD, it's really amusing..."

Why is it when someone shares an opinion that's based on proveable experience it is all of a sudden "FUD"? I have nothing personally against FreeBSD other than my experience.

The savage driver is still broken, it choked on hardware that runs Linux perfectly. No FUD just facts. And Slackware is just as up-to-date as any other distro...it just gives you the control without all of the bloat and layers of abstraction.

I'll say it again: a man who has had an experience is never at the mercy of a man with an argument (FUD).

"X -> mostly the same support
Audio -> almost the same
TV -> a field of Linux, but they have some unstable drivers too in kernel
Network/Wlan -> no real difference, maybe better in OBSD"

As far as I experienced, some Linusi recognize hardware that PC-BSD doesn't, but the majority of standard components can be used with both of them. So both are nearly equivalent. If I can believe some informations I've heard, Linux does support more hardware than "Windows" does, so maybe this is true for PC-BSD, too?

Does "TV" refer to the TV out (video) of GPUs or HDTV 'n stuff? Or multimedia capabilities? I would like to get the video output of my ancient ATI RV250 Radeon 9000/9000 working. :-)

"As far as I experienced, some Linusi recognize hardware that PC-BSD doesn't, but the majority of standard components can be used with both of them. So both are nearly equivalent. If I can believe some informations I've heard, Linux does support more hardware than "Windows" does, so maybe this is true for PC-BSD, too? "

Your talking about hardware support out of the boks right? Which still doesnt make sence unless you compare a linux kernel that is just as old as XP.

"Your talking about hardware support out of the boks right? Which still doesnt make sence unless you compare a linux kernel that is just as old as XP."

I don't know if I understand you correctly. BC-PSD, because it's FreeBSD in its base, does not only support hardware that is compatible to the drivers available from the kernel, it also supports hardware that can be accessed via loadable kernel modules. I don't know if Linux kernels handle this the same way. Maybe, there are more drivers included in the Linux kernel by default?

"I don't know if I understand you correctly. BC-PSD, because it's FreeBSD in its base, does not only support hardware that is compatible to the drivers available from the kernel, it also supports hardware that can be accessed via loadable kernel modules. I don't know if Linux kernels handle this the same way. Maybe, there are more drivers included in the Linux kernel by default? "

No i was just pointing out to that guy dragging windows in to the thread that if he should do that he atleast should do it on equeal terms. It might not produce the result he wanted but it surely would make him look more serius.

And i am aware of the posibility of loading kernel modules. I've never had to do it with any of my hardware. Even on hardware that wasnt bought with freebsd in mind.

"
Surely Linux can be compared with this list..."

It might i don't care about linux... I don't wanna waste my time on linux. I run freebsd on my server and one of my workstations and linux wont replace any of my freebsd installations. If i somehow should find a job where linux could do it better i'd switch but i have to do anything where linux could do it better. I might be using the same tools on my bsd's but atleast i don't run them on a overly hyped system that cant deliever what people claim.

FreeBSD simply does not rise to the level of Linux in hardware support.

This thread is about PCBSD, not about Linux. 30% of the threads on this site is about Linux distro this and Linux distro that. Face the fact... some of us don't favour Linux and that's that. Your subjective opinion belongs to the other 30% threads, so stay there.

And regarding HW support is a very debatable feature. is it the no of drivers? No of solid drivers? No of high performance drivers? no of reliable drivers? My opinion is this. IF it's in the BSD trees, it means they will work and not bring crashes. If the same goes for Penguinhackcrap I assume it to be experimental until experiencing different!

Benchmarks are for the simple minded, because they don't say anything if you don't know every advantage/disadvantage of the tested system.

>Demonstrate that FreeBSD has as good of hardware support as Linux in benchmarks and I'll change my mind.

Why? Your problem is you muddle up FUD and hype with stability and reliability.

>Until then a man with an experience is never at the mercy of a man with an argument...:-)

A word based on FUD isn't anything to cope with. The attitude "show me something and I will think about it" isn't the attitude of *BSD people. They know what they are doing, stay with Linux and live in a world of fantasy, buzzwords and so on.
Most *BSD people are from Linux or commercial Unices - think about it. Most people in Linux world are from Windows, something to consider too :o)

There are two basic paradigms for computer - networked (BSDs, Unix, linux) or stand alone (Amiga, DOS, classic Mac). Now most are a hybrid.

I'm not an IT professional but I've been using computers for 25 years. First experience was on a PDP-11. Been through the C64, DOS, classic Macs experiences etc - even teletype terminals on an ancient HP3000 mainframe.

The unfortunate problem with the increasing popularity of OSS is the tendency to make Linux/BSD ditros more Windows/Mac like. Too much emphasis eye candy, binary installation and other trivia at the expense of speed and stability. Why not try and sell the advantages of APT, ports, FVWM etc rather than mindless double clicking and 3D effects.

I've been interested learning BSD for a while. The problem, for me anyway, is that learning BSD has been kind of like jumping head first into a pool and not really knowing whether or not it has any water. It's not that I can't learn it, but more over that I haven't dedicated any time to doing so. Mostly out of frustrating in the past with installing FreeBSD (newbie errors).

With all that said I've found PC-BSD to be a good way to test the waters without having to get real wet. I realize that a lot of "geeks" don't like the idea of dumbing down powerful OS's just to make them "user friendly", but that's really what it takes to gain acceptance. The computer using masses aren't necessarily computer smart (probably close to computer stupid). I believe that the key to a successful OS is making it easy to use, but also secure. By the way when I say "successful" I don't mean like Microsoft.

And sorry for the bad analogies. I'm tired and I've got a headache from trying to create the perfect letterhead. (L)user think you can do anything with a computer. Hence why IT jobs are so secure.

It's probably just the disappointment that one more windows alternative has apparently not lived up to immediate expectations. I used to curse Linux for being perversely difficult but still wanted to 'do' *nix, so I became a Mac switcher. But even here, there are times when you have to understand the fundamental things that inform hardware, the OS, software and all the relationships between them, in order to make things work, and work well. In the end, RTFM, as much as I have kicked against that expressive phrase, is just the truth, albeit told somewhat harshly at times. I do not doubt that this user had a hard time for the reasons they understood, and maybe they with the guidance given here can transmute this difficult experience into something more positive and productive - I hope so!